Bel is thinking

Something very wrong with this proposal:

Travel restrictions could be imposed by America on 800,000 British citizens of Pakistani origin because of concerns about terrorism, it emerged yesterday.

The move has been prompted by fears that British Muslim men were behind several major bomb plots. 

I sincerely hope the Government do the right thing and reject this move, even if it means abandoning the visa waiver scheme altogether.

Once a person has acquired British citizenship, whether by birth, marriage, or any other way, that is all that matters. As far as the visa waiver scheme is concerned, the US Government is not entitled to look behind the passport and impose restrictions based on who is carrying it. That is tantamount to creating different categories of British citizens, and we should not allow that.

Under our law, every British citizen is entitled to the same rights that attend upon citizenship. We should never accept a situation that creates a dividing line between our people, that deems some holders of the passport to be somehow less worthy than others.

The Telegraph reports that the Foreign Office is uneasy about the proposal, with a spokesman stating that:

“The Muslim community, including those of Pakistani origin, are an important part of our society and we would oppose strongly any proposal to single them out in response to the actions of terrorists”.

All well and good, but that is not the point. We should resist this proposal, not because the muslim community “are an important part of our society”, but because if they are British, they are entitled to the same rights and privileges as anyone else. In other words, even if they were an unimportant and insignificant part of our society, so long as they meet the citizenship test, that should be enough.

I would advise the Foreign Office to consider carefully what is at stake here; the deliberate devaluing of our citizenship by another country. I put it as high as that.    

Over at Unity’s place, a well-argued piece in response to Tessa Jowell’s article in the Guardian on a code of conduct for blogs.

Right now, I am so fed up with this Government and its attempts to interfere in every aspect of our lives. As such, I lack the requisite energy even to comment on this crazy idea. Unity’s article gives Jowell a basic education in the nature of the internet, tackles her erroneous assumptions and (I hope) gives her plenty to think about. Highly recommended reading.

Another week, another house trashed by MySpace invaders.

How long before some Government minister (John Reid? Alan Johnson?) wades in with talk of a ban?

David Miliband writing in the Telegraph today, setting out his political beliefs.

His theory can be summarised thus:

• In the years after 1945, the people of Great Britain said ‘I need’, and the Labour Government stepped forward to meet that need (NHS, education etc).
• In the 1980s, people said ‘I want’, and the Thatcher Government, in trying to meet those aspirations, ended up leaving behind the weaker citizens.
• Since 1997, the people have been saying ‘I can’, so it is now up to the Government to empower citizens, by devolving power to the people etc.

In summary, we have passed through three phases in the last 60 years, I need, I want, and I can.

A bit seductive at first glance, but under proper scrutiny, the whole thing falls apart.

David Miliband’s first error is to assume that society is speaking with one voice, and it is saying only one thing at a time,  ’I need’, ‘I want’ or ‘I can’. I put it to him that it is not. During what he termed the ‘I need’ generation (ie post-1945), does he really believe that there were not as many ‘I want’ or ‘I can’ voices even then?

There have always been people with needs (I need), aspirations (I want), and ambition and ability (I can); the only difference is that at different times in the political life of this nation, one group of people was being listened to more than the others. I submit that it is not, as Miliband would put it, a question of citizens changing their status (from ‘I want’ to ‘I can’, for example). Rather, it is a question of politicians changing their focus. It is the politicians who have switched their focus from one group of people to another, depending on their own interests.

Perhaps in 1945, the Labour Government was more attuned to the desires of its natural constituency (ie the ‘I needs’). Similarly, by furthering conservative ideals of personal responsibility, individual enterprise, and limited State control, the Conservative Government of the 1980s was suited to the ‘I want’ group. It is therefore not a question of different time phases, rather it is a question of political focus. These three groups have been with us from time immemorial, and to pretend otherwise is simply naive. The ‘I needs’ and ‘I wants’ were there in 1945, and they are still here today. Similarly, there has been a clamour by the ‘I cans’ ever since 1945. Why is David Miliband only hearing them today?

There are reasons why one particular group’s voice may be louder than the others at any given time. These reasons could be socio-economic, cultural, etc. Politicians simply respond to the loudest voice they hear.

This puts me in mind of Perelman’s concept of justice. Perelman was a philosopher of law who contributed much to the theory of justice. He believed that there were six criteria for determining justice, and that once a society has decided on which criterion to use, it must ‘treat like with like’ within that criterion. His six criteria were as follows:

1. to each according to his works
2. to each according to his needs
3. to each according to his merits
4. to each according to his rank
5. to each according to his legal entitlement
6. to each the same thing

To analyse Miliband’s theory using Perelman (loosely), I would submit that the 1940s concept of justice was as in (2) above. The Labour Government focussed on distributing social goods etc according to the needs of the people. That was their definition of justice for that time. In the same way (and note, I am doing no more than extending Miliband’s theory), the Conservative Government of the 1980s would have chosen (1) or (3) above as their starting-point. Far, therefore, from being a phase, ie a shift among the citizens in their status or priority, it is instead a shift in political focus. As far as the ‘I can’ generation of the 1990s is concerned, what has now happened is that politicians have sensed the urgency coming from the hardworking, aspirational part of society, and have conveniently changed their language (if not their acts) to garner the support of that constituency.

At this point, I should note another weakness in his theory. By Miliband’s reasoning, we have come out of the ’I want’ phase and are now in the ’I can’ phase. I submit that ‘I can’ cannot possibly be a phase, in the sense that he says. Far from being a phase on its own, it is no more than a means by which one satisfies either a ‘want’ or a ‘need’. For example, ’I want’ alludes to desire to acquire, but says nothing about how to meet this desire. It could be by private enterprise (’I can’), or even just as valid, it could be by social security payments. I think it is therefore misleading to claim, even if his theory stood up by other means, that there is a valid ‘I can’ phase.

But even if I were to accept wholesale every word in his article, I have difficulty seeing what this Government (with which Miliband dines at high table) has done to address the desires of the so-called ‘I can’ generation. Is it the torrent of legislation pouring out daily from the pen of our ministers, or the acres upon acres of red tape? Is it the high tax burden that has stifled private enterprise, and led to the fall in disposable income? Is it the attempts to control what we say and think, and to regulate our every move? Or perhaps it’s the growing information-gathering powers that this Government accords to itself at every stage.

Whichever way I look at it, the message from this Government is clear and unambiguous: ‘you can’t’.

Tessa Jowell is getting tough. She has set her sights on television phone-in shows, warning them that they face being shut down and prosecuted if they ‘operate as lotteries’.

In order not to be classed as a lottery, a phone-in show must offer free internet entry for those who choose not to call the premium rate line.

Tessa will be watching, hawk-like, for any television phone-in shows that fail to do this.

So a television phone-in show, drawing its audience from adults, all of whom have the choice whether or not to take part, dare not act as a lottery. On the other hand, a local education authority may decide, with Government approval, to allocate school places by precisely that method.

Wonderful.

Gordon Brown has been proposing for a while to get hold of any money we have lying in ‘dormant’ personal bank accounts, and spend it on youth and community projects.

This is not a new proposal. He first mentioned it in the pre-Budget Report of 2005, and I wrote about it at the time. The idea is to target money in account that haven’t been used for the past fifteen years.

There is something deeply worrying about this proposal. At its most basic level, it is an assault on property rights. If I wish to leave my money sitting in a dormant bank account for over fifteen years, I do not see why that should entitle the Government to swoop down and take it. And no, it doesn’t matter that the Government is trying to reassure me that I can still reclaim it, even after the Treasury has taken it. That does not make a difference to the fact that the Government has helped itself to my property without my permission.

In addition, it doesn’t matter that the money is to be spent on youth projects, and such ‘good causes’. That is nothing short of emotional blackmail, trying to paint the owner as a selfish dog in a manger who has no use for the money, but doesn’t also want the well-intentioned Government to spend it on deserving and vulnerable people. Or even worse than emotional blackmail, one can compare the Government’s proposed actions to those of a thief who breaks into your house and steals your goods, but it’s alright because he’s only going to give it to the poor.

The point is that it doesn’t matter how the Government spends it. So-called good intentions do not legitimate the act of theft.

The Government will argue that it is not stealing the money because an account owner can still reclaim it if they want it back. But that’s not the point. Why should one be required to take positive action to recover their property? And for those who may not realise that they have some money in a long-forgotten account, the Government’s appropriating of that money is nothing short of theft. They cannot, after all, claim back money that they had forgotten they owned.

Some people may argue that if you cannot remember that you have some money sitting in an account, then perhaps you don’t really need it, and the Government should spend it as they wish. I disagree. That is a dangerous proposition. Property rights should not be qualified in that manner. The fact that you do not make active use of your property should not disentitle you to ownership. For example, the land law provisions under which squatters sometimes acquire rights to property are so tightly drawn because the law recognises that depriving a land owner of his property is not to be done lightly.

To my mind, there is a worrying philosophical issue at the root of this proposal, and this is that the State’s rights to our income and property extend beyond what it may lawfully collect through the conventional laws of taxation. This proposal seems to me to be saying ‘we have the right to take your property, unless and until you show us that you need it.’ This changes the relationship between us and the State. Rather than us yielding up our income, it is the State taking it as of right.

But why should I be surprised by this? As a lecturer in financial law, I have been watching intently as the language of the tax code has changed over the years since Labour came into office. Tax avoidance laws are framed in aggressive language, and even when reliefs are given, they are framed in such language as to leave one in no doubt that the Government sees it as bestowing unto us from its largesse, rather than giving back to us that which we gave it in the first place. Against this ideological framework, I suppose that the current proposals should not surprise us at all.

The doomsayers of climate change are not having a good week. They are being ‘beset round about’, as the Bible would put it.

First, Channel 4’s splendid documentary, and now a hard-hitting article in the Telegraph by Janet Daley. She pours scorn on their repressive tactics and self-righteous manner, and restates the case now resounding everywhere that before swallowing their burdensome dogma, we must first see scientific evidence:

I don’t know about you, but before I can feel comfortable asking people in emerging economies such as India to forgo the benefits of economic growth and mass prosperity, before I can sentence some of the poorest people in the world to living indefinitely without modern technology, before I am even prepared to ask the lower-paid of this country to give up the improvements in their quality of life to which they have only just become accustomed - I want to hear any and every argument that is to be had about this theory.

And to the comrades in the green movement, I would say this: before you slam the lid on debate, and put your invasive restrictions into place to deny people freedoms and comforts that have transformed their condition, you had better be damned sure that you are right.

And she is right. If climate change is a scientific fact, then the green movement should not be nervous about allowing debate. It is only a religion that would insist that contrary evidence be not countenanced. So far, we have seen envirofascists telling us that ‘the climate change debate is over’. It is not over. In fact, it is only just beginning. It will not be over until we have incontrovertible proof one way or the other.

If we are to accept wholesale the claims of the green lobby without investigating their veracity, then we are dealing with the subject as one would a religion. However, even in religion, there are false prophets, and every religion has guidelines for determining who are the false prophets in its midst.

I don’t know how it works in other religions, but this is the Biblical test for if a prophet is true or false: look to the evidence. We are asked to ‘examine everything carefully, [and] hold fast to that which is good’.

Yes, as far as pronouncements by prophets are concerned, not even religion (at least, not Christianity) demands unthinking acceptance. We are to be rational, use our God-given faculties, test the evidence, and then ‘hold fast’ to whatever passes that test.

So having satisfied neither the scientific nor the Biblical standards, perhaps these repressive false prophets may wish to think again.

The envirofascists are out in full force, and this time, they have St Valentine’s Day bouquets in their sights.

Latest Government figures show that the flowers that make up the average bunch have flown 33,800 miles to reach Britain. …

Environmentalists warned that “flower miles” could have serious implications on climate change in terms of carbon dioxide emissions from aeroplanes.

Some official from the Friends of the Earth feels it would be better if we grew our own, rather than depending on those from Kenya and other far-flung places. Oh, leave us alone, will you?

So-called anti-fascists protested outside the home of the English National Ballet. They are unhappy about the ‘BNP ballerina’. Some of them carried placards calling for her to be sacked.

Let me get this right; membership of BNP should preclude one from gainful employment? Have we now come to the point of driving out from society anyone whose views we do not like? No doubt many of these ‘anti-fascists’ were earlier this week in support of the Sexual Orientation Regulations, stridently making the case that no-one be deprived of the right to buy goods and services on account of their sexual orientation.

All very well, but do they not see the irony in their position? Or is it simply that in our prevailing morality, members of the BNP have no rights?

In the so-called fight against fascism, perhaps a little consistency wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Tony Blair. I always thought it impossible ever to be disappointed by the man, such are my already low expectations of him. Even so, I cannot believe that he has backed down on his comments about not giving up long-haul flights. He has now given some mealy-mouthed promise to ‘offset the carbon emissions caused by his personal travel’.

I supported his original stance. A shame that he has now given in to the clamouring of envirofascists all across the land.